by Barbara J. Saffir – August 6, 2007 via BusinessWeek.Com
Burrowed 50 feet into a hillside near Washington, D.C., this former Federal Reserve Bank once held billions in cash. BAR Architects and SmithGroup have overseen its transformation into the new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center for the Library of Congress.
The nonprofit Packard Humanities Institute purchased the decommissioned bank bunker at Mount Pony in Culpeper, Va., for $5.6 million in 1998 and then funded its $155 million transformation, donating the facility to Congress last week — the largest gift ever made to the legislative branch. The 415,000-square-foot complex now provides space for preserving 6 million items from the library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. These items were previously scattered throughout seven locations nationwide.